Consider this a litmus test for whether or not you should see the new gross-out pregnancy comedy Babes, starring Ilana Glazer and Michelle Buteau. Are you pregnant or planning to get pregnant at some point? Are you currently a mom or parent? If you answered yes to any of these questions, keep reading. 

Now, have you been craving a movie that shows hilarious pregnancy scenarios in all their realness? What about heartbreaking and soul-lifting moments of female friendship? Do you laugh at excessive poop talk and/or phrases like “a light pussy drizzle?” 

While this is a highly unscientific test, if you found yourself at any point thinking, “these are my people,” I implore you to give Babes a chance if you want to laugh out loud, cry, and relish in the fact that this is one of the (if not the only) movies made for you—a person who has experienced pregnancy, childbirth, and the exhaustion of parenthood—and wants to laugh-sob about it. 

Here’s the gist: Eden (played by Glazer) is a free-spirited, slightly self-absorbed yoga instructor who teaches class out of her 4th-floor Astoria walk-up apartment. Her best friend, Dawn (played by Buteau), is a successful dentist with a husband, son, and a baby on the way, who lives in a fancy row home on the Upper East Side. By all accounts, she has it all. 

Eden and Dawn are so close that Eden attends the birth of Dawn’s second child, where hilarious and gross antics ensue. On the way home, Eden falls into bed with a man she meets and has an instant connection with (after mistakenly believing that she can’t get pregnant when she’s on her period). Right about the time Eden realizes the guy is ghosting her, she finds out she’s pregnant—and despite the concern of her friend, decides to keep the baby and become a single mom, naively assuming Dawn will be with her every step of the way.

And here’s where things get interesting. That huge choice not only upends Eden's life, but also disrupts the delicate balance of her friendship with Dawn. The movie isn’t perfect—it drags on a bit in the middle and leans on a few silly premises—but it brings to life the raw feelings and surreal experiences of pregnancy and new motherhood in a way I’ve never seen before on film. Here are the most real, heartwarming, and hilarious things about Babes that had me feeling all the feels.

Nothing is Off-Limits When it Comes to the Gross and Mind-Boggling Parts of Pregnancy

The mantra of this movie could very well be these are the things we don’t talk about with pregnancy and childbirth. So, if you’re eager to see hilarious exchanges about what happens to the female body when you’re carrying and expelling a human from you, Babes will…deliver. What you won’t get is the actual visual (no emotional scarring like that 8th-grade childbirth video), and I think that’s the point. We need to start by talking about this stuff first.

And while you may not routinely check your pregnant friend’s cervix to see if they’re in labor, you’ll certainly laugh when Eden tells Dawn her vagina looks like it’s “yawning.” There’s also an Office Space-esque emotional release that involves a medical-grade pump and a fire that I felt deeply in my soul, and a hilarious reference to the Omen that made my horror-loving heart happy.

Without giving all the funny moments away, know that this movie is pushing the boundaries of what’s acceptable to say, show, and make light of when it comes to pregnant bodies, and it’s pretty damn refreshing. 

Poop Humor Isn’t Just for Toddlers and Teenagers

This movie is full of poop, again, not literally, but the poop talk runs rampant and I am here for it. From Eden telling Dawn that she’s going to have “the most gorgeous postpartum poo poo of all time” to a fixation around pooping during childbirth, and perhaps my favorite exchange, a conversation between Dawn and a plumber about the Revolutionary War-era shits that backed up their pipes, causing a home renovation emergency, the potty talk is on full display. 

I love that this movie is not playing coy about the bathroom habits of women in general, but also the fact that poop is kind of a central topic during pregnancy and childbirth, too. We all poop, some of us poop on the table when giving birth. It’s cool. 

Pregnancy and New Parenthood Can Be Really Lonely

The relationship between Eden and Dawn does a good job of showing how we can each get so wrapped up in our own story, that we lose sight of how our loved ones may be feeling. When Dawn starts to miss Eden’s ob-gyn appointments, it becomes clear that Eden may need to find someone else—someone who isn’t struggling to manage new parenthood with two kids and a demanding job—to be her support person throughout her pregnancy. But Eden doesn’t seem to get that memo.

On the other hand, it’s obvious that Eden needs the people who love her to really step up during this time. It was a little hard to watch, actually. I felt so deeply for both of them, but each’s inability to step into the other’s shoes ends up driving a wedge between them. Their separate, but equally valid loneliness highlights a crucial aspect of this life-altering time—that even if you have a supportive partner, one person often ends up carrying the load. It’s only ever going to be just you giving birth, and sometimes it feels like that just carries on into breastfeeding, not sleeping, etc. In other cases, like Eden’s, it really is just you. And that can feel, as she says, like a-tiger-is-chasing-you scary.

There Is Exhaustion That Comes With Being a New Mom (and Working Parent)

For Babes, a comedy, Buteau really nails the emotional limbo that so many new moms feel. She’s vulnerable and honest about how hard it is to bring home a baby, parent an older child, and have a job, all at the same time. Twice she talks about how her exhaustion, the mom guilt, and the struggle to breastfeed are dragging her down into a funk. It’s never explicitly named as postpartum depression, but it looks a lot like it.

I would argue these emotional conversations are even more impactful than the famous American Ferrera monologue in Barbie about the expectations placed on women. Dawn’s quiet breakdown is somehow more real, visceral, and relatable. 

That Female Friendships Change With Babies and Kids

When Eden is a good-time, single, childless friend, the relationship between the two women works just fine. Eden is an escape from the realities of Dawn’s family life (‘shrooms never hurt anyone, right?). The truth is Dawn certainly deserves that outlet and Eden also deserves her friend’s support. But when Eden gets pregnant and expects Dawn to pick up that emotional labor for her, too, it all comes crashing down. 

There’s nothing carefree about going to an amniocentesis with your single, pregnant friend. It’s not fun to imagine having to take care of an adult and their baby, on top of your own family, when you’re barely hanging on. When the friendship dynamic is no longer what it once was, the two women have to find a new way to be there for each other. And when they do, I guarantee, you’ll be sobbing in your popcorn, too.